BHP Shareholders for Social Responsibility
The Griffin Venture Incident!
The Griffin Venture is a floating 'production, storage and offloading' platform operated by BHP Petroleum off the West Australian coast between Barrow Island and North West Cape.
It might be described as a 100,000 tonne tanker attached to a mooring.
Undersea hoses carry natural gas and oil at a rate of about 100,000 barrels a day to the Griffin Venture, which stores it until it is transferred to other tankers for transport to the refineries.
When maintenance is to be carried out in or around the storage compartments of a tanker it is critically important that the residual gas in the compartments is vented and purged until there is too little to sustain fire or cause an explosion.
An oil spill in this environmentally sensitive area could have a devastating effect on the marine environment and into the Exmouth Gulf.
This page is under preparation.
To return to our list of specific issues, click here.
To return to our home page click here.